The IPA, in a conference held yesterday, announced that progress had been made towards clear joint-industry standards to provide greater accountability for both advertisers and media buyers when using the internet as a communications medium.
Over 60 media buyers and advertisers attended the conference to hear speakers including Alan McCulloch, chairman of IPA, Bob Wootton of ISBA and Ewan Darby of AC Neilsen/MMS.
Amid growing concern over the state of the new media industry the IPA, ISBA, the Internet Advertising Bureau and ABCe have been working through the Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS) to encourage web site owners to agree to the independent audit of their web sites.
Calling for the establishment of clear industry wide standards, McCulloch said: “The expectation of accountability from digital media is greater than has been demanded from traditional media. Therefore in order to properly realise digital media’s potential it is paramount that we have standards and definitions, the aim being to create confidence, transparency and meaningful measures of effectiveness for advertisers and businesses.”
The first set of industry agreed definitions to be announced by JICWEBS, which included terms like; user, page impression, reach and frequency, are aimed at providing a set of metrics which will allow comparability between sites when using audited or site-centric data. McCulloch spoke of the need for an industry wide adoption of pre and post buy audits which will become effective; “in a significant number of weeks rather than a short number of months.”
The Joint Industry Committee for Internet Advertising Research (JICNET) also announced proposals to combine the various user-centric surveys currently operating, to provide one survey based audience measure for the industry. Speaking on behalf of JICNET Wootton said: “The new metrics are clear, they’re in English and they make common sense.”
AC Neilsen/MMS also detailed revised plans to measure ad expenditure on the internet, Darby spoke of the need for methods of analysis to be similar to those used in existing media, so that internet advertising expenditure can be 100% comparable. The company plan to publish ad expenditure of the top 50 UK web sites by July or August this year.The demand of Rivals.net chief Mark Leaver, to ‘audit or be dammed’ (see Rivals.net Heads Campaign For Internet Industry Audit), was the underlying message of the conference and the need for accountability sooner rather than later was emphasised by Wootton’s description of the industry as ‘commercial anarchy for advertisers.’
IPA: 020 7235 7020 www.ipa.co.uk
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